Assessment Drives Learning… But should it?

For anyone who knows me and my research, this post might come as a bit of a surprise. If you’re not familiar with my research you can check it out here.  A quick glance down the list of my publications would tell you that I’ve been writing about assessment for over ten years and I would almost guarantee that each one of those papers has the statement ‘Assessment drives learning’ in it. So, has my mind changed in regards to assessment? Do I think that assessment doesn’t or shouldn’t drive learning? I think my thought process in regards to assessment is more nuanced than simply saying what the purpose of assessment should or should not be; however, what I will say at the outset is that the way most assessment happens and the purpose of most assessment, especially at the school level, should not drive learning.

My writing on assessment has always been about giving students autonomy in their learning and in the assessment of that learning. My research has primarily focussed on ways to allow self and peer assessment to permeate traditional assessment structures and allow for students to have a voice in their own assessment. Unfortunately, despite some success in getting the research published and some favourable reviews from colleagues, in both the tertiary education sector and the schooling sector, for the most part, my contention that students can assess themselves and have that ‘count’ has not been taken very seriously. The feedback I always hear is that students cannot be trusted to assess themselves. Or that students will inflate their assessments to get better marks.  I don’t contend these points of view and my research even points to this, albeit not to the extent that many would think, but the issue here, specifically in school-based assessment, is that the grade, the mark, the teacher’s assessment of a student’s work has little real meaning.  What do I mean by this?

Well my American readers might not understand a school system that has no standards, but the Australian system has, as far as a traditional understanding of standards goes, no standards (see previous post for more on this).  What is a traditional understanding of standards and why are Australia’s standards different, you might ask?  In brief, while the US does not have a universal school-based grading system, there is, in most states, a Fail grade.  In the US University system this is under a 59% and in schools it is often similar. In other words, the minimum achievement standard is a 60% and if you score lower than this in a high school class, you have to take that class again. If you Fail more than a certain number of classes, you either attend Summer School or repeat that year.

In Australian schools, we have no such concept of Fail. In universities <50% is a fail (I’ll write more about this in a later post, but I find it appalling that the standard is so low) and there is a colloquial understanding in schools that <50% is a fail, but as I said, the concept of a minimum standard does not exist. If a student gets a 45% in a class they don’t ‘fail’ they have just achieved at a lower level than may have been expected (below satisfactory). That said, the Australian Curriculum does operate on a standards-based framework; it just doesn’t have a minimum standard, rather it has an achievement standard. If students achieve the standard they are considered satisfactory; if they achieve higher than the standard they are above satisfactory and if they score below, they are considered below satisfactory in any given discipline.  

So, where does assessment fit in to either of these systems? It might seem obvious that assessment is a higher-stakes endeavour in a system with minimum standards; however, I would make the contention that in any system, whether it had a minimum standard or not, that someone’s assessment of what another can or cannot do, does not bear as much weight as their own assessment of their own work – this is my argument. In a system devoted to learning, assuming that is what our schools are, the teacher’s assessment of a student’s work is useful in assigning a grade, which is an administrative function of school, but not a valuable aspect of that student’s learning. I made these points in my last post about Why School Sucks Part 1, so I don’t want to re-hash them here, instead I’d rather focus on the idea of self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s own ability.

A student who knows they have more to learn or a student who realises they’ve mastered a concept, does not need a teacher to tell them this, especially not in the form of a mark or grade.  The concept of autonomy in learning, if that is a goal, and it should be, is to allow the student to direct their own learning in-line with the curriculum or even parallel to the curriculum. This doesn’t mean we give students the freedom to do whatever they want, but we allow them the leeway to reach their potential in a way that is congruent with their own needs and goals. I can hear the teachers out there saying: but what does that mean in the context of my class? Or, that sounds great in theory, but what does it look like in practice? Re-shaping school, or a class, to maximise the potential of students, is not as challenging as one might think; however, it does take a different outlook on what the purpose of school is and how to transform our classes into beacons of learning. If your conception of school is akin to the traditional model where students go to school to learn what teachers tell them; take tests that teachers assign; accept marks that teachers give; and, then move on to the next idea when the teacher says, then I don’t expect you to agree with the argument presented.

Those who read this blog are likely well-educated people who had good, or at least satisfactory experiences at school.  You are likely either a teacher, teacher education student or someone interested in teaching. When the well-educated think back to their school experience they often don’t think of it as a time of failure or dread. When we got our tests, assignments and assessments back we were probably reasonably satisfied with the end result, or if we weren’t, we knew that we could improve. What happens when this is not the case? What happens to the student who consistently is told, by way of a grade or mark, that their value and self-worth is ‘below satisfactory’ or ‘fail’.  This is an experience many students face, but probably not one most teachers had to face when they were at school.  I think it is reasonable to imagine that most teachers had relatively positive schooling experiences, so they don’t really understand the ramifications and feelings of inadequacy that testing and grades might manifest in poorly performing students.  

As a university lecturer, one of the first things I noticed in courses I taught, was that the students really cared about the assessments – of course they do – their future relies on the successful completion (passing) of those assessments. At the tertiary level, students must pass and what matters most in earning marks and grades are assessments.  In school, at least in Australia, it’s different. The purpose isn’t to pass, as there is no concept of pass and fail, rather it should be to learn – and external assessment at that level, or any level where the purpose is learning, is not that important.

According to Bloxham and Boyd (2007) there are four purposes of assessment: Certification, student learning, quality assurance and lifelong learning capacity. Here we can easily see where school and university diverge. Although all assessment should reinforce student learning and lifelong learning capacity, assessment at school, at least in the compulsory years, does not certify or relate to quality assurance; however, many schools still assess as if they do. The Higher School Certificate (Australia) or high school diploma (USA) may be a type of certification, but it isn’t a certification that carries much weight as far what one is capable of. In other words, it isn’t a qualification of anything in particular – it denotes that one has finished the requirements for school and should have some basic knowledge in the domains that were studied.  As far as quality assurance, for the most part, only standardised tests such as NAPLAN and the HSC in Australia or the SAT and ACT in the US can claim to ensure quality assurance. So, we have to ask the question again, what is the purpose of assessment in schools, especially those schools without a minimum standard?

The idea that assessment is a necessary component of schooling is a simplistic reiteration of what has always been done, rather than the purposeful implementation of an instrument that can help maximise student potential and learning. I’m not suggesting that student work should not be reviewed and suggestions made for improvement, quite the opposite. I believe more student work should be reviewed and more suggestions should be made on how that student can improve, but this is different than the traditional forms of assessment that serve administrative purposes such as assigning a grade. Assessment can drive learning, but we need to make sure that assessment is part of the learning process, not an afterthought to judge previous student learning, which is often the case. As soon as you stick a grade on a piece of assessment or exclude the student from the assessment process, you eliminate the only form of assessment that is really meaningful and can help a student become a life-long autonomous learner – their own self-assessment.

Why don’t we let students decide when their work is ready for evaluation? Why don’t we tell students what we expect from them (outcomes) and let them decide how to illustrate their attainment of that outcome in their own way, in their own time, when they feel they have reached mastery? Imagine telling a student to submit their work for feedback, not assessment, when they feel they have mastered the content. When a student feels they have mastered content, then, and likely only then, will constructive feedback be useful. What do we expect from a student who realises they don’t fully grasp a concept, but is forced to be evaluated anyway? In any other realm, this would be considered absurd and disrespectful to the student – why should they be evaluated before they are ready? They know they are not ready, so when the poor mark and the ‘constructive’ feedback are returned, what does the student think?  If they knew they hadn’t mastered the content, they would already be expecting a poor grade and the feedback is superfluous because they know they didn’t do their best. On the other end of spectrum, the student who is ready for evaluation and willingly submits her/his work for feedback is open to receiving that feedback, because they were respected throughout the process and realise that the school is actually trying to help them learn, rather than assign marks and grades for administrative purposes.

Schools really need to disentangle the needs of the students from the needs of a broken system. If the system requires marks and grades to justify its existence or to report to a government entity, then we have already lost the battle to improve schooling from the point of view of it being a learning institution.  Schools seem to exist to perform an administrative function in an effort to prioritise student learning, which is bass-ackwards! Student learning needs to be the priority and we need to find ways for the administrative function of schools to better serve the higher purpose of maximising student potential.